Archive for the ‘Wrath of the Lich King’ Category

I’m back at last with a non-Cataclysm-related post. I wanted to catch folks up on where my characters are.

Lug and Pig are now level 29. I’m almost to my current goal, level 30! Lug still has those heirloom shoulders so leveling hasn’t been real bad. He’s been in the Hillsbrad Foothills allot lately, taking a break from Thousand Needles. That place is not allot of fun to me.

Gav was in Wintergrasp again today. I did ok, dying twice – once one-on-one to an Orc rogue, which never should have happened except that I was 90% asleep at the time. I had him dead to rights and couldn’t finish him off. Dammit. While running back after that death, WoW froze and crashed. When I logged back in, the battle was down to 45 seconds and everyone was just chilling in the courtyard. WTF happened to the Horde? No one was fighting, and I had been standing in one of the side areas of the fortress when my game froze and came back to find myself alive. Weird.

With the honor I earned in WG, I went to Stormwind and bought a mount I’ve wanted for a long, long time – a Black Battlestrider. I wanted one the first time I saw one but they used to cost Battleground tokens. No more! A mere 50k honor and it’s mine. Gav’s happy now.

Gav was back in action tonight and had another memorable experience. I queued for a dungeon and 23 minutes later, I reached the Trial of the Champion. I died in the jousting phase when I was knocked from my horse and trampled. I quickly re-zoned into the instance and we blew through the champions and the mobs around Paletress. but she was tough. She summoned a shadow Cyanigosa who promptly beat us down. We finally killed her but it took forever. Paletress herself was a pushover. Finally, the Black Knight arrived.  We shot right through his first phase and were doing ok on the second phase until the ghouls he summoned got loose. The spread among us and killed two of us – a DPS and our healer. Another DPS died shortly after the third phase began. That left a bear druid and myself to two-man his last phase. Y’know what?

We did it.

Yeah, we kicked his last form’s ass, but it was touch and go obviously. When it was over the bear was under 40 HP, and I was down there, too. It took my Bubble, a runic healing potion, a handful of Flash of Lights and a lot of luck to keep me alive. We did it though. Yay! We then rezzed everyone and passed out the loot.

It was a good run for all, with no poor attitudes or arguments. That’s how a run should go.

Except… maybe with a little less stress at the end.

Well, I’ve been playing on-and-off again, and gotten Gleave to level 70. Here is in the Temple City of En’Kilah. Or whatever that icy dead-filled fortress is in north east Borean Tundra. He’s on his way to 71 now, and is doing pretty well so far. Gav’s on ice at the moment. I just don’t have the drive to keep running dailies and whatnot with him all of the time.

Wow, how long has it been since I’ve updated here? Oh yeah – almost two months, not counting my sporadic post last month. Well, I’ve been playing just about as much. Gav’s been sitting on the shelf recently, and none of my alts have gotten much burn either. However, I did log Gav in long enough to do the Midsummer Festival boss, Ahune.

Ahune = Dead. He wasn’t very hard (I’d researched him prior to the battle), and nary a word was spoke during the battle. Kinda boring. Actually, that’s kind of why I’ve taken time off from the game. The same old sterile dungeon runs have gotten old. I’ll certainly be in allot when Cataclysm hits, but as it stands right now, I have little drive to play. Oh well.

Another random heroic, another group minus a DPS at Ionar in Halls of Lightning, the second time that’s happened to me. I wonder what it is that makes DPS drop at that point so often? Anyway, I got tossed into a group and we promptly swept through the end of the dungeon. Once we killed Loken, our mage copped a ‘tude and ranted about him carrying everyone that fight. He did do almost twice as much DPS (8k) as the next highest (4.5k, me), but his attitude was not welcome. I got my rewards – including yet another frozen orb – and left as quickly as I could. I’m growing weary of high-horse riding players complaining that other players are holding them back when we clear runs with no issues. No one died and we were through it in no time.

In unrelated news, Beta, my counterpart on e-AAGH.net, has had a vicious anti-WoW stance since the game came out. I got her to try it for one evening, but that was short lived. Now I learn that she signed up for a ten-day trial and didn’t tell me. Actually, she opted to tell me after it was over. That was cruel, I feel, because I’ve been trying to get someone I know to play with me forever. I’m still upset.

Sorry I’ve not been around, but I’ve been busy leveling Gleave, my Death Knight to reach Northrend. He hit level 68 the other morning in Area 52 in the Netherstorm.  He promptly went to Ebon Hold to train and then to Stormwind Harbor. There, he boarded a boat with two other players en route to Northrend for the first time. We acknowledged each other and promptly went to the flight master at Valiance Keep in Borean Tundra -  always the first stop in a new zone, right? Now I’ve got two toons in Northrend! Gav is going to bum some gold off of Gleave (who surprisingly has more then Gav) to buy Gleave a book as a welcoming gift. Welcome to the frozen north, Gleave.

Last night was another long, long night in Azeroth. In three and a half hours I got to chat with guildies, run some heroics with ‘em, and nab enough Emblems of Triumph to get a new helmet.

I first ran a Culling of Stratholme random with a PUG, but we screwed up and forgot to bring Arthas in the last part. Going back to get him got us all killed. Fun! I also missed out on the Bronze Drake again, but this time it was on a fair greed roll, so I have no complaints.

Later a guildie and I, along with a friend of his, ran three more heroics; Oculus, Hall of Stone and Nexus. The first two were relatively uneventful but the Nexus run had problems. First, our tank (my guildie) and a hunter (my guildie’s friend) got disconnected. My guildie got back on quick but his buddy was off for a while. We also had a relatively inexperienced lvl 80 priest for a healer who did fairly good, but we overdrew at one point and I died. Our warlock actually rezzed me with a Gnomish Army Knife.  Our hunter got back on eventually, but by that time we had four-manned about half of the dungeon.

In the end, I got my helmet  and we said so long for the night. It was a very successful night, and I had a good time.

I ran Azjol’ Nerub tonight with a decent PUG, but the final boss gave us trouble. At one point our tank was dying and the healer (a dwarf priest) was struggling to keep up with the damage, so I pitched in with my Flash of Light spell. On another occasion, after a wave of mobs in that battle, our DPS warrior was down to 20% health. Our healer was busy doing who-knows-what (he seemed to think that healing the tank was his only job) so I was going to hit the warrior with a Sacred Shield and then a Flash of Light, but then the boss popped back up. With no time left, I fired off my Lay on Hands spell to put the warrior right. We then finished off the boss as I activated Avenging Wrath to lay the ‘smack down’, as they say.

This was after a Wintergrasp match where I notched a slew of kills and only died once. With a rather balanced match, the Horde had little to no tenacity, making the battles easier. The other day I was in Wintergrasp to see about buying some stuff with my Stone Keeper’s Shards when I was jumped by a Tauren shaman. He hit me with Thunderstorm and caught me off guard. When I finally realized what was happening, I was down to 40% health. Fortunately, I was still on my gryphon so I flew away to heal. When I got back, he was pulling the same trick on a few other players. I landed behind him, and it was Hammer of Justice, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Hammer of Wrath, game over. Seriously, it was one of those kills where it was over before the stun wore off. I hate those when I’m on the receiving end, but proud when I pull it off. This after whopping that Orc warrior in WG the other day. I think I can somewhat hold my own one-on-one with an average-skill or lower PvP player these days. Not bad, says I.

Oh yeah, and that PUG I mentioned at the start? I got a Pug for that PUG, thanks to an achievement. Nice!

I just spent three and half hours playing WoW, and still didn’t accomplish what I set out to do. My goal was to complete the Noblegarden meta, but I came up one Blushing Bride short. I thought that Dressed for the Occasion was needed for the meta, so I spent two-plus hours farming eggs around Kharanos, outside Ironforge. When I finally figured out it wasn’t needed, I’d gotten 275 chocolates, two white tux shirts, a pair of black tux pants, three spring circlets, four spring flowers, three blossoming branches and five spring robes, but zero elegant dresses. I had found my spring rabbit’s foot earlier, so I got that achievement, and I met some random dwarf priest out in Un’Goro Crater and we helped each other get hard boiled.

I then wandered back into Dalaran, and opted to go to Wintergrasp and see about maybe joining a Vault of Archavon raid. I didn’t, but while I was sitting peacefully in Wintergrasp Fortress’ inner sanctum, I was jumped by an Orc warrior. He got me pretty beat up, but I got to the transporter and  escaped outside the inner room to heal. I buffed myself up and then headed back in to face him one-on-one in a fair match. He was pounding on an AFK dwarven hunter, so I hit him with Hammer of Justice and promptly beat him down. Yes! The dwarf gave me a high five as he got back to his keys while I was finishing the Orc. With healing spells, a good stun, and strong melee powers (plus the ever-popular bubble), some days it’s good to be a paladin.

This morning was rather boring. I ran three heroics – Oculus, Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom and Gundrak. The Oculus run was interesting since there was no synergy in our group – everyone was kind of doing their own thing, but it came together to make a win. In Ahn’Kahet, I nabbed the achievement Volazj’s Quick Demise for my troubles. In Gundrak, we stormed the place and were done in no time. Then the most interesting part of my morning happened: I went to Wintergrasp.

For the first time in quite a while, I queued up for a Wintergrasp match. The battle saw the Alliance with a near full raid while the Horde attack consisted of – no lie! – less then 10 players.  They wound up with Tenacity x20, which made things harder. I was getting crit for 15k a shot! We eventually got our act together and moved in large packs since the Horde players weren’t going in groups. I don’t care how much tenacity you have – 10 on 1 is bad odds. Or good odds. Depends on which side your on.

In any case, our battle took around 10 minutes, but that’s all I needed to die four times. It was odd, really, that most of the Horde were Blood Elf paladins. They had like one warlock and a warrior, and then a handful of Blood Elf pallys. One in particular was really vicious, accounting for half of my deaths and a ton of other player kills. Still, even he folded under our massive population advantage. Death to the Horde! lol